273. Not Feeling Confident & Want to Know How to Increase Confidence In Yourself? Start By Seeing Confidence as Trust, Not a Feeling
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[00:00:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome back to Joy Lab
[00:00:10] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And I'm Aimee Prasek. So we are launching into our Element of Confidence this month, and I think it's important to note that you do not have to feel confident to practice Confidence. I know, it sounds weird, but seriously.
So, I think I've done a lot of courageous things in my life, yet few of them have I done feeling confident — feeling confident when I try something new, or something that stirs up some anxiety for me — I do not feel confident. It is not a feeling I can manifest, that I can force. And I used to think that that was a problem. That it was a problem that I didn't feel confident all the time, that other people must have something I didn't have, and I had to fix myself in some way so that I could be that confident, fearless boss-lady, kind of [that] manifesting version of confidence.
And buying into that BS kept me living kind of small, timid, sort of paralyzed I think, for quite a few years; just waiting to feel how I was told I needed to feel. I think finally I just realized that waiting for that feeling of confidence wasn't for me. I was sick of waiting. I didn't wanna keep going through my life like that. So now I just really have a different relationship with confidence, and this is why I think it is so powerful, and what we'll get into over these next several Episodes, [which is] creating a new relationship with confidence. Not trying to force a feeling or power-posing your way to confidence, but gaining a new, more empowering understanding of how it can work in your life.
[00:02:04] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, what strikes me about confidence is that there's a universal challenge, I think, of kinda waiting for confidence to show up before trying to do something. And it can get to the point of paralysis , you know, where we just — we just don't move. We don't do anything. And I see this constantly in my work. For example, somebody might wanna start exercising 'cause they know it's going to help their mood, but they wait until they feel confident that they'll stick with it. Or somebody wants to reach out to a friend, again, knowing that's gonna be good for them, but they wait until they feel confident that they won't be rejected. Or maybe somebody wants to speak up in a meeting or [during] public speaking that they have to do, and they just feel so uncertain that they wait until they think they have something valuable to say. And, you know, this waiting can just go on and on.
And I think that part of what's happening neurologically is that our brain is looking for certainty before giving us a green light to act. That part of our brain called the amygdala, which helps detect threat, is basically saying, "I just don't know about this. I'm not sure this is gonna go well. I can't guarantee you're going to be safe, therefore don't act yet." And so we wait. We wait for confidence, some feeling of certainty to help override that fear that's there. But it might never come because life is inherently uncertain.
[00:03:56] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. We talked a lot about that [uncertainty] last Element with Humility. And waiting for this magical confidence to show up and override fear, absolutely. I felt that. And certainty is something we really crave amidst a life of uncertainty, as we got into last Element. We need to work with this, boosting our uncertainty tolerance, and ironically, I think that's at the heart of confidence, even though the more common definition leads us completely away from that, as you're alluding to, Henry.
So the common understanding is confidence as a feeling, and we're trained to associate that feeling with assurance and certainty. On top of that, it's usually a kind of confidence that has to do with feelings around how others will see us — meta-perception. So confidence is kind of this, performance of fearlessness, is what we're going for.
I think imposter phenomenon has suffered from the same kind of definitional hijacking. I talked about that — I'll link in the show notes to some Episodes around imposter phenomenon, or better known as imposter syndrome. But yeah, it... I think similarly, confidence has been sort of sold as a cure for something you-you're told that you lack; that there's something wrong with you if you don't feel confident, or that you have imposter syndrome if you have self-doubt. It's just not the case. We all have self-doubt. We all have fear. It's wired into us. Confidence is not supposed to be a thing that we have 100% of the time.
So here's kind of the definition that we're gonna work with, [it's] a little bit different. I like this one better. A different interpretation of confidence. It's the more literal definition of the word, the Latin root "com" — meaning "with" — and then "fidere" — meaning "trust." So to "trust with." This interpretation is really different than what we're sold in the confidence industry. This is kind of a behavioral definition. Not a feeling, but a trust in our effort; a willingness to act. And when we think about confidence in that way, it can be really freeing. It has nothing to do with certainty, or how someone is perceiving you, or even how you feel about yourself. Confidence means that you have a willingness to act and a trust in your own efforts. Which also suggests we need to know what matters to us, you know, where we wanna put our effort toward, and we'll dig into that a lot more in some later Episodes.
A really helpful bit of wisdom comes from Dr. Russ Harris. He wrote the book, "The Confidence Gap." Here's what he wrote, "The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later." So we'll lean on Harris' work in our Element of Confidence. It's a great book if you wanna dig into it. I'll put it in the show notes.
[00:07:09] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, I really like the distinction that you're making there, Aimee, 'cause I think most of us have learned to think of confidence as a feeling.
[00:07:17] Aimee Prasek, PhD:
[00:07:17] Henry Emmons, MD: As a feeling that we need to have before we're able to act. But what you're saying is that that's backwards, and I agree. So think about it this way. When you learned to swim, did you feel confident first as you went into the water? Or did you flail around , maybe swallow some water as you're doing it, and gradually, by repeated exposure and action, and failure perhaps, you developed the confidence that you could swim? That's a good example, I think, of how it's the action that builds the feeling. It's not the other way around.
And I think that there's neuroscience that supports this. When you take action despite feeling fearful or uncertain, you're actually rewiring your brain. You're teaching your amygdala that you can handle situations that feel uncertain. Every small action, every step into the unknown is just more data for your nervous system that you are more capable than you thought. I think this is why that insight from Russ Harris that you mentioned is so powerful. The actions of confidence come first. The feelings of confidence come later. And yeah, we have it backwards in our culture. We have made confidence a prerequisite when actually it's a result of repeated actions.
[00:08:58] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, we have it backward. It's really helpful to think of swimming 'cause, like, you hear that [term], you know, "confident swimmer," which in my mind, when our daughter — when we get asked "is she a confident swimmer?" — it's all about how many times has she been in the pool. So we really understand it in those more, you know, just kind of simple skill-based things. But man, it stretches across every domain. It is about that practice.
I wanna hang here too, on these feelings of confidence, just like, how much we've gotten it backward. So much of the messaging that we get, either through media or even at home for many of us, was that you should always be confident. You should always be certain, appear certain, unwavering, dominant, strong, unafraid, fearless. Seriously, go on a device for 15 minutes and I guarantee you will see some advertisement claiming you can be fearless. Like those "No Fear" shirts, I think I've said this on the Podcast, no fear is not humanly possible. It is not possible to be fearless, or more correctly, it would be very bad if you were fearless. You would have a rare genetic condition or significantly damaged amygdala. It would be bad news. You need your fear and threat detection systems. Fear is not the enemy here. Fear is not the opposite of confidence. So confidence is not what we've been sold, what we've been told.
I think also when confidence is focused on feelings, and just whether or not you feel confident or not then all the focus is on the individual. You are 100% responsible for your lack of confidence, and nobody else has a role here. But with confidence as a kind of trust, that's just not true. Confidence as a willingness to act, it stretches this concept out to look at more community or systemic reasons why we may not feel confident. Because absolutely there are ways culture crushes our feelings of confidence. And there are also barriers to action and trust.
So maybe you're part of a community who experiences disparities in your healthcare, maybe frequently having symptoms dismissed. That will likely impact your feelings of confidence in your own health behaviors and self-care. And there are lots of other examples here too. If you're part of a group that receives less pay for the same work compared to someone else, are you going to feel so confident in asking for a raise? Even if you practice a bunch of negotiating techniques, _The Art of the Deal_ maybe, "leaning in" — probably not. There are barriers like these that can make the feelings of confidence really hard to come by, and that can also impact our ability to take action to build a sense of confidence. So if we're ignoring all that, and just saying that confidence is a matter of feelings, and that it's just on the individual, then nothing changes. [Saying] you just need to feel more confident and you'll manifest the change — this is where toxic positivity lives. That kind of manifesting culture, it knocks us all down.
I think the truth is, when we can hold personal and collective responsibility together, it's not one or the other, you know — we can do that by moving confidence out of this feeling space. You know, the cure for these kind of systemic barriers is not to just feel better about yourself that once you feel more confident and then all the concrete ceilings come down, and you achieve all your goals and the American dream — it just doesn't work like that. So with this idea of confidence as trust and willingness to act, it's a reminder that confidence is not a personality trait you either have or you don't. It's instead a practiced relationship with uncertainty. That's how trust is built with ourselves, with others. It's something that's impacted by the world around us, so there's shared responsibility in it as well.
And that no matter if we're feeling confident or not, we are worthy. We can show up as we are, and we can put the effort in for skill building because it will make a difference. No matter how many barriers are up, there is that intrinsic state of confidence that we will work on, that does come through these intentional, thoughtful, actions that we can put forth.
[00:13:48] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah, I think what you're saying is so important, Aimee. 'Cause if confidence is just a feeling then, you know, we're left blaming ourselves or maybe blaming entire groups of people for not having enough of it, and that's untrue, and it's also potentially harmful, I think. So when we understand confidence as trust and willingness to act, that just changes all of this. It becomes relational. It acknowledges that trust is built between you and yourself, between you and others, between you and communities, or bigger systems, and that really does matter.
You don't need to feel confident to act. In fact, some of the most courageous people I know act precisely when they don't feel confident. They feel fearful, doubtful, uncertain, and they still take action. That's... that's real confidence, I think. You know, I think about my own experiences. There have been times I've had to have difficult conversations, admit I'm wrong, try something new. I haven't felt confident in those moments, and I haven't always acted either. But when I do, the feeling of confidence can come. Maybe not during the action, but afterwards I'll feel better, and I feel more confident I can do this again next time when I have a challenge that's kind of similar. So this is why I think this work really matters, because when we untie confidence from this feeling of certainty, we give permission to show up as we are, with all of our doubts and fears, and still take action toward what matters. Maybe not every time, but perhaps more often than not.
[00:15:51] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, more times than not. I think, yeah, it really is an empowering perspective to take. So I hope also — this is making me think of perfectionism, Henry, that we work to untie that from confidence, which we will do in the next few Episodes — I hope we're kind of resetting your definition of confidence a bit. And actually, to do that more, let's untie some other terms or constructs from confidence.
Self-worth, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. These are often used interchangeably with confidence, and it can be really helpful to understand how they're different. So first, self-worth is often defined as how positively or negatively you perceive your value. But some researchers, like Dr. Albert Ellis, would argue that your worth isn't actually up for evaluation at all. Yes, Ellis. We'll come back to that in a moment. I love that.
Self-esteem is more granular than self-worth; more about your attitudes toward yourself, and there can be more stable aspects to it, like some folks just seem to have been born or reared with higher self-esteem. But we have a lot of influence here because a big part of it can be built or diminished by the frequent self-evaluations and self-judgments we make about ourselves in relation to a certain skill, or capability, or activity, you know; so we compare ourselves and determine, yes, I'm amazing here, or no, I'm terrible here, and self-esteem goes up or down, and up or down. That's what happens with fragile self-esteem when we tie it tight to external validation or our performance, which really is where most of us anchor our confidence. When we're thinking about feelings of confidence, it very much sort of sits into that fragile self-esteem space.
Now, self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to do well in a specific situation. It's attached to a certain skill or goal, so it is more specific than self-esteem, and it's quite changeable. It's actionable; we can build it. And ideally it doesn't blend over. You know, I can realize I'm terrible at something specific, and it doesn't need to influence my self-efficacy in a different activity or domain.
So we've really mashed all this stuff together with confidence, and it can snag us. We can let these frequent comparisons, judgments, self-judgments, perceptions — mostly about our abilities, or how we think others are rating us — we let that take up a lot of space and even kind of work its way up to diminish our self-worth if we're really holding tight to it, and of course, our confidence.
And as I hinted [at] with Ellis, some researchers have argued that we should get rid of all this focus on self-esteem and self-worth, and replace that focus with the practice of unconditional self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is really about seeing and allowing ourselves to be as we are. It's not positive or negative. Acceptance is about embracing all the parts and experiences of ourselves, and I kind of like this idea of getting rid of this focus on self-worth or self-esteem, because it suggests that our self-worth, again, is not up for evaluation. You are worthy. And that maybe a too heavy focus on it and, you know, like focusing on building up self-esteem just reinforces the idea that all our activities, all the ways we perform in the world, must initiate a positive or negative attitude about ourselves. Especially that. The self-worth, I'm like, I wanna figure that one out. But the self-esteem, you know, focusing on that, it does trigger that kind of immediate [reaction that] I must assess this.
[00:20:04] Henry Emmons, MD: Mm-hmm. I really like the focus on unconditional self-acceptance. That's just so great
[00:20:13] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. Yeah. Can we look at that instead of self-esteem? I mean, we pushed this hard with kids in the '80s and '90s. There was a huge push on building up self-esteem. It was like the D.A.R.E. campaign and the self-esteem campaign, right? Those were the two public health things. Well, let's look at the outcomes, folks. Like, yeah.
And I would argue we just built up a lot of fragile self-esteem. Dr. Roy Baumeister — his work here is fascinating. There's good data to say this push on self-esteem — push, push, push on self-esteem, particularly the way we were trained to kind of force the feeling — it has probably contributed to some of the drop in resilience, and rises in anxiety, and depression, and narcissistic tendencies that we've seen in millennials and younger generations. That's my thought. Something to think about.
[00:21:07] Henry Emmons, MD: Hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that understanding these distinctions you're making can really be kind of liberating.
Let me just see if I can unpack it a little bit more here. So how we evaluate ourselves based on performance, and then there's comparison, right? We compare our performance to other people — that's fragile. That's really fragile. It goes up if you nail something, and it crashes if you get any critical feedback. It's like building your sense of self on quicksand.
Self-efficacy, belief in your ability to do specific things, is a little more grounded than that, you know, I think that develops through repeated success. So you believe you can run a 5K, for example, because you've trained and you've run shorter distances. You believe you can handle difficult conversations, perhaps, because you've done that before.
And then self-worth — the deep sense that you matter simply because you exist, not because of what you do — this is really a solid foundation. This is what allows you to take risks, to fail, to try again, because your worth isn't really on the line here. It doesn't go away if you try something and you fail.
So self-acceptance, you know, is just such a — it allows you to act despite having the doubt and the fear, 'cause it's this ability to be with yourself just as you are, even with your flaws and your limitations.
So I think when people develop real confidence, they're actually developing some combination of these things. They're building self-efficacy because they're taking action and they're practicing, you know, succeeding or not. They're grounding themselves in self-worth that isn't dependent on a certain outcome. And then they're practicing self-acceptance; being okay with not being perfect.
And I think that there's a twist here — that where you start does matter . So if you grew up receiving mostly conditional approval, "I love you when you get good grades," or, "I'm proud of you when you win the game," well, then you're likely gonna tie your worth to your performance, okay? You can't help that. That's kind of where you're starting from. That makes confidence harder to access because failure feels like a threat to your core sense of self. But even then, I think what's really hopeful is that that's where you're starting from, but you are not stuck there. You can learn to separate your worth from your performance, you can build self-efficacy through action, and you can practice self-acceptance over and over again. None of these are fixed traits. They are skills that can be developed through practice.
[00:24:43] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yes. Yes. That's what I love so much about getting a better understanding about what confidence actually is and what it isn't. Also because, this might sound weird, it's not something we actually need. You actually don't need to feel confident, as we're saying, to take action. And it's something we can build up because it does feel good to feel confident.
So that's what we're doing in this Element. We'll build up our trust, our willingness to take action, our self-acceptance, and in time it can boost your feelings of confidence. We're gonna mainly lean on frameworks from Dr. Russ Harris, as I noted, and then Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — ACT — with a Joy Lab twist of course, 'cause we can't help ourselves, to really build a more empowering relationship with confidence.
So to close our time today, I want to share some popular wisdom from Seneca.
here's what he wrote. "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
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